Louise Lyle
232
ronmentalism” as the range of ecological ideas espoused by “people
who are concerned about environmental issues such as global warming and pollution, but who wish to maintain or improve their standard
of living, […] and who would not welcome radical social change”.
23
While its advocates are now sufficiently influential to lobby politicians and captains of industry, opponents argue that the real impact of
their views can only ever be restricted because of their firmly anthropocentric outlook, always placing human needs before those of the
environment and other species.
Deep ecological perspectives, on the other hand, adopt a
clearly biocentric perspective as their starting point, acknowledging
that “[t]he well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on
Earth have value in themselves”, and that “[t]he flourishing of human
life and cultures is compatible with a substantially reduced human
population. The flourishing of non-human life requires a smaller human population”.
24 Rosny’s unsentimental depiction of a situation in
which the very survival of the human race is firstly considered to be
linked to effective population limitation, and in which other species
subsequently grow in dominance as humanity retreats, suggests that he
may well have anticipated the principles of biocentric inhumanism in
his own ecological reflections. His assertion that human industrial society’s direct responsibility for the creation of the ferromagnétaux “a
beaucoup préoccupé nos aïeux” (p. 141) meanwhile hints at the issue
of the ecological guilt of his own contemporaries, and this in an era
prior to the foundation of anything resembling an environmentalist literary canon.
25
It is in this connection, in effectively anticipating the problems that man’s abuses of the Earth may be storing up for the future of
his own descendants, that Rosny’s writing may be seen to be truly innovative. His multi-layered conception of a terrestrial text has a
clearly natural aspect, variously revealed in the forms of the paleontological treasure-trove beneath our feet, in the geological phenomena
that have been continuously on-going since the Earth’s beginnings,
___________________________
23 Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 18.
24 Garrard, Ecocriticism, p. 21.
25 Romain Gary’s Les Racines du ciel of 1956, recounting the story of a fictitious
campaign to save the African elephant from extinction, is widely recognized as the
first “environmentalist” French-language novel, in the modern sense.
232
ronmentalism” as the range of ecological ideas espoused by “people
who are concerned about environmental issues such as global warming and pollution, but who wish to maintain or improve their standard
of living, […] and who would not welcome radical social change”.
23
While its advocates are now sufficiently influential to lobby politicians and captains of industry, opponents argue that the real impact of
their views can only ever be restricted because of their firmly anthropocentric outlook, always placing human needs before those of the
environment and other species.
Deep ecological perspectives, on the other hand, adopt a
clearly biocentric perspective as their starting point, acknowledging
that “[t]he well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on
Earth have value in themselves”, and that “[t]he flourishing of human
life and cultures is compatible with a substantially reduced human
population. The flourishing of non-human life requires a smaller human population”.
24 Rosny’s unsentimental depiction of a situation in
which the very survival of the human race is firstly considered to be
linked to effective population limitation, and in which other species
subsequently grow in dominance as humanity retreats, suggests that he
may well have anticipated the principles of biocentric inhumanism in
his own ecological reflections. His assertion that human industrial society’s direct responsibility for the creation of the ferromagnétaux “a
beaucoup préoccupé nos aïeux” (p. 141) meanwhile hints at the issue
of the ecological guilt of his own contemporaries, and this in an era
prior to the foundation of anything resembling an environmentalist literary canon.
25
It is in this connection, in effectively anticipating the problems that man’s abuses of the Earth may be storing up for the future of
his own descendants, that Rosny’s writing may be seen to be truly innovative. His multi-layered conception of a terrestrial text has a
clearly natural aspect, variously revealed in the forms of the paleontological treasure-trove beneath our feet, in the geological phenomena
that have been continuously on-going since the Earth’s beginnings,
___________________________
23 Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 18.
24 Garrard, Ecocriticism, p. 21.
25 Romain Gary’s Les Racines du ciel of 1956, recounting the story of a fictitious
campaign to save the African elephant from extinction, is widely recognized as the
first “environmentalist” French-language novel, in the modern sense.